What burn times should I get from I/O Magic 16X?

[thc]

I installed the drive today, and it's taking a little over an hour to burn at 4x and 8x. I'm buring with DVDShrink (& Nero) on Memorex 8X DVD-Rs. Nero took an hour and a half to copy a DVD. I flashed the drive already, what else can I do? My 4x sony that crapped out the other day was faster than this.

Any sugestions?

[Noahtuck]

Mine always burned at 8X in about 8 minutes... and 6X in about 10 minutes...
give or take a minute.
I also use NERO and DVDShrink.

Is it a new drive ??
Is it taking that long just to burn the dvd or including using dvdshrink ??

I had an I/O once and i'll never buy another one.... it worked good for awhile but then started burning at only 2X so i dumped it for my 4th... a LITE-ON.

[steve2713]

DMA is not enabled, by the sound of it. Go into Device Manager under Control Panel(in System). Look at your IDE channels under IDE controllers to see if they are set to DMA and not PIO.

[Bodyslide]

Did you set the drive as the master or slave?

[dmagic1]

Just curious if you got the BTC or the BenQ?

[gsulliva]

How can you tell if its a BTC or a BenQ. The drive shows up as "atapi dvd dd 2x16x4x16" under hardware but says BenQ Malaysia on a sicker on the drive but when I tried to flash it with new BenQ Firmware it said it wasn't a support drive. Very confused.

[steve2713]

It is a benq. They'll show up as 'atapi'.

[gsulliva]

Looked more closely at the sticker, says BenQ DW 1620 August 2004. DVDInfo says the firmware is G7G9. How can I apply the newest BenQ Firmware? When I try, it says drive not supported. Any ideas?

[budz]

Looked more closely at the sticker, says BenQ DW 1620 August 2004. DVDInfo says the firmware is G7G9. How can I apply the newest BenQ Firmware? When I try, it says drive not supported. Any ideas?

go to the BENQ FORUM at cdfreaks.com they have the information you're looking for.
http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=-1&f=92

[dmagic1]

On Benqs site you should see both the G series(OEM) and the B series(Retail) firmwares.
There is also a topic on club cdfreaks forum about how to convert a G series drive to B series. I looked thru a few pages but couldn't find it. I know its there but I don't have the time to locate it.

BTW, after you update to the newest firmware, you will have a 4x dual layer burner.

[-jsl-]

I don't think BenQ has put the latest firmware for the bulk/OEM version online yet but it's available here.

[tekkieman]

@thc - Did you get it sorted yet? If not, I have the complete package to turn the OEM with G firmware to the DW1620Pro with B7P9 firmware. All 3 updates in one package with instructions.

I got the drive yesterday, and did the firmware upgrade before even inserting a blank into it. While I typically don't worry about anything more than rated speeds, rumor has it that this level firmware will let you burn the Verbatim 2.4 DL at 4x.

Let me know if you want this package. I got it from a thread at cdfreaks, but I don't have a link for you. Sorry

[thc]

wow, thanks for all the replies. Here's answers to your questions:

It's a new drive, and the 1 hour 5 min. time was DVDshrink time, but only about 3 minutes was for encoding.

DMA was not emabled. I checked it here's what it was set at:

Primary, device 0 - DMA if available, current Ultra DMA (hard drive)
device 1 - same (hard drive)
Secondary, device 0 - DMA if avail., current DMA (DVD ROM)
device 1 - PIO Only, current PIO (Burner)

I changed the burner to DMA if available and now:

Secondary, device 0 - DMA if avail., current PIO (DVD ROM)
device 1 - DMA if avail., current Ultra DMA Mode 2 (Burner)

I will try a burn with that to see if it makes a difference.

Next, the burner is the slave (secondary IDE) the DVD ROM is the master. I've read that they should be on different channels, but the physical layout makes that hard. Is it worth Mickey Mousing the case to get the two DVDs on different IDEs? I don't often go disc to disc, usually I decrypt to hard drive first.

The burner is a Benq, it show up as that in hardware manager and in Belarc's profile.

Lastly, I updated firmware yesterday to B7P9 (dated 11/9/04). It wasn't three files though, just B7P9.zip which contained B7P9.exe. Was this the right file? I got it from Benq's site, under firmware for XP, for the DW1620/DW1620 Pro.

Again, thanks for all your help. I'm gonna try another burn now to see if changing the DMA made a difference and check back here after.

I'm not real upset that it's taking so long, with my old burner, I rarely burned faster than 2X (which I think took less than an hour). What I don't get why there's no difference between 4x and 8x!

[tekkieman]

The burner is a Benq, it show up as that in hardware manager and in Belarc's profile.

Some of the I/O's show as BenQ, some as ATAPI IDE. It depends on if it has B or G firmware.

Lastly, I updated firmware yesterday to B7P9 (dated 11/9/04). It wasn't three files though, just B7P9.zip which contained B7P9.exe. Was this the right file?

If it had B firmware to begin with, that is right. The three step process is to convert the G firmware drives from ATAPI IDE G revs to BenQ B revs.

Looks like you should be fine.

[thc]

after changing the DMA on the burner I did a DVD @ 4X and it took one hour. A music CD @ 8x took 6 min.

[thc]

update: Just simmed an 8x and it took 14 minutes. That's more like it, but why an hour at 4x?

[racer-x]

The I/O Magic 16x burner I got Yesterday is really a BTC DRW 10161M. I flashed it with the latest firmware (A07F). It is set as Slave with the DVD-ROM as Master. The DMA is enabled.

I just burned a full disk(4.35 GB) on cheap-ass HP/CMC 8x DVD+R disk. It took 8:53 from start to finnish. It burned @ 8x (11,080 kb/s).